Remembering
by Dara Tavar
Summary: Alex has final decided that it's time to let Gia know how he feels about her, now that the circus has settled down and everything is as it should be. But after witnessing her late-night meeting with Vitaly, he's no longer certain about her feelings. With Gia hurt and Alex mad, it's up to Vitaly to step in and tell Alex the whole true about his relationship with the female cat. R&R!


**I was recently watching this with a cousin of mine, and I got to wondering about the relationship between Gia and Vitaly. Anyways, this is my take on what might be between those two cats-as well as my first Madagascar story. I may do some more stories for these movies, but we'll see how well this one does first. Get ready for several new stories (or faster updates) to come out now that I have time to write over the summer. Leave me a review to let me know what you think of this story.**

**Oh, and I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to get stuff out there...I had some personal issues to deal with recently (and still waiting to see how that all works out), and then when I was getting back into writing, I got really sick. But now I'm feeling better (not 100%, but I'm working on it) and soon I'll be getting more and more out there!**

**Enjoy!  
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**DT**

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**Remembering**

"Have you seen Gia anywhere? I need to ask her something," Alex said, turning in circles as he looked around the animals packing up for the night. He'd been looking for her almost an hour now, wanting to ask her to have dinner with him the next night.

"She went that way," Jonesy replied, pointing around the corner.

He smiled to himself, looking up at the starry sky over his head and drew a deep breath. Maybe he would ask her to walk with him under the night sky, since it was so beautiful, and then he could work up to asking her out.

She was the most beautiful cat that he'd ever laid eyes on, and he could have swore that there was something between them before, but he'd never reacted on it in the months since the other circus animals had rescued them from the zoo. He hoped he hadn't ruined his chances with her because he'd waited so long to do what he should have done immediately.

He turned the corner, only to quickly step back and peek around the edge of the boxcar. There, on the other side, was Gia…but she wasn't alone. Instead, she was with Vitaly and they were currently climbing into his boxcar. As Alex watched, Gia laid down inside with the other cat and curled up against the tiger's side. Vitaly leaned over her and closed the door, but Alex had seen enough already.

He had no chance with Gia.

Turning away, Alex began the walk back to the boxcar he was using with his friends, his head bowed low.

"Did you find her?"

Alex looked up to see Jonesy watching him expectantly. "Oh, uh, she's already sleeping I think. It's fine though, I'll catch her some other time, I guess." He turned and walked away before the little dog could say anything else.

The next morning, Alex walked through the training animals without caring about what they were doing. His mind was still stuck on what he'd seen the night before and what it could mean. Had he missed his chance and the tiger had moved in to replace what Alex himself could have been? Or had there always been something there between Gia and Vitaly that Alex hadn't seen simply because he didn't want to believe it?

He wasn't sure what to think.

"Alex!"

He froze, his hair standing on end at the sound of her lightly accented voice. Slowly, he turned to face her and met her excited eyes as she ran up to stand right in front of him. He couldn't get the image out of his mind of her pressed up against the tiger the night before.

She was breathing fast, excitement causing her to be a bit fidgety. She smiled at him, smoothing down her fur. "Jonesy told me that you were looking for me last night. That you had something you wanted to ask me. So, is there something you want to talk about, Alex?" she asked.

He cleared his throat, looking away from her face. "Yeah, um, about that…what I wanted to ask was…" he trailed off, looking up at her.

She nodded to encourage him to continue, clasping her paws to keep from moving them about too much out of her excited nervousness.

He lifted one paw to rub the back of his neck. "I wanted to ask you about…" he trailed off again, looking up at the trapeze on the other side of the box cars. Their trapeze. When his gaze lowered to the ground, he saw Vitaly practicing jumping through his hoops. "…if you still wanted to go the trapeze."

Her face slowly fell. "You…you wanted to ask me about doing the trapeze?" she asked, frowning in disappointment. "But, but why?"

"Well, I just thought that maybe you might be interested in learning to jump through hoops with Vitaly. I was thinking that you might want to do something with him now." He looked away from her, his eyes turning to the trapeze once more. "Or maybe you want to teach him something on the trapeze, and do that with him."

"You…you don't want to do the trapeze with me anymore?" she asked, her voice shaking a little.

"It's not that…it's just that…well, I know how close the two of you are. I figured that maybe you would want to spend some time with him. I know we're together a lot—most of the day, every day—and that you don't get to be around him much…so I thought that you might like to have something to do with him."

"And what would you do?" she asked.

"I'd find something else to do. If you joined him, I guess I'd figure out a solo act to do." He shrugged his shoulders, avoiding her gaze. "And if he joined you on the trapeze, I might try out jumping through hoops like Vitaly does. Or something else. I don't know."

Gia backed up a step, unable to believe what she was hearing. "What are you saying?"

"Just…go talk it over with Vitaly and let me know what you've decided."

Alex turned and walked away, unable to stand there any longer and pretend that he wasn't feeling as broken up inside as he actually was. If he was in her presence any longer, he would give himself away and let her know that finding out about her relationship with Vitaly had crushed him.

Since he had his back turned on her, his didn't see the tears begin to roll down Gia's face, or the way she turned and ran away from him. He didn't notice the concern on Vitaly's face when the tiger saw her coming, or the way he comforted her—but he certainly would have taken it as another sign of a romantic relationship between the two of them.

Instead, Alex was too focused on his own pain to notice anything else right now.

It wasn't long afterwards when Alex was in the boxcar he shared with Marty, trying to decide what he could do in the circus that didn't make him think of the good times he'd had with Gia, when the door suddenly burst open to reveal an angry, feral looking tiger on the other side.

Vitaly stepped into the car and slammed the door behind him. "_Nayet,_ you no talk_!_" he shouted when Alex opened his mouth. "You listen to me. You hurt Gia, and now you answer to me."

"Hurt her?" he asked in confusion, shaking his head when Vitaly growled at him. "I gave her the opportunity to spend more time with you. Isn't that what the two of you want? I'm just trying to make her happy here."

"And you think that breaking her heart is going to make her happy?"

"How am I breaking her heart?" Alex asked, even more confused than he had been before. "I'm letting her be with you, not keeping you apart."

"Be with me?" Now it was Vitaly's turn to give the other cat a confused look. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't have to hide it from me anymore." He shook his head slowly and dropped to sit on one of the crates inside the boxcar. "I went looking for Gia last night, to ask her to walk with me and maybe to have dinner with me tonight—but you don't have to worry about that anymore—and I saw the two of you."

"You _saw_ us?"

"Yes. I saw you. I watched her get into your boxcar and lay down with you. But don't worry, I left after that because I know that it's really none of my business what goes on between the two of you." He leaned back against the side of the car. "I mean, yeah, I thought there was something between Gia and I all this time, but I know now that it was one sided. She wants to be with you. I get that now and I promise that I won't try and stand in your way. You can be together; you don't have to hide it from me or anyone else. I'm sure that they will all accept the two of you, and be happy for you."

Vitaly stared at him in silence for several long moments before taking one long step forward. He lifted his paw and slapped Alex in the back of the head.

"What was that for?!" he cried out, clutching at his head as he looked up at the tiger standing over him.

"You, my friend, are an idiot."

"What?"

Vitaly shook his head, standing tall and crossing his arms over her chest. "Alex, there is nothing romantic going on between Gia and I. There never has been and there never will be."

Alex sat up a little straighter. "Are you serious?"

He sighed and moved to sit at Alex's side. "Nearly five years ago, the circus was travelling through Italy. My wife and I had slipped out for the night to be alone, as it was our anniversary, and we came across this bundle. It was cold and wet, but when we looked closer, we could see a nose. Inside that blanket was Gia, only a few days old, abandoned and near death."

Vitaly may have been sitting at Alex's side, but he was far off in the past now.

"We brought her back with us and kept her here, in the circus. My wife returned to look for the young cub's mother, to see if she could find her, but when she returned she'd had no luck." He shook his head slowly. "But Gia wanted nothing to do with my wife. It had been her own mother who'd left her there for death, and so she was afraid of my wife because she was a female cat."

"What happened after that?" Alex asked in a soft voice.

"She would not leave my side for the next month. She slept at my side, she sat with me as I practiced, and whenever I preformed she went out with me." He smiled and looked over at Alex. "Gia was my little girl. She was the daughter that I never had. My wife didn't leave me until my accident, but we had problems long before that. You see, my wife could not have children, and I had always wanted them. I guess that when Gia came along, I may not have treated my wife as I should have, but I tried to make the three of us a happy family. My wife though, she did not come to care for Gia the way that I did. She saw this young cub as tearing us apart, where I saw her as an answer to my prayers; as something that could bring us closer together. It did not happen though."

"I'm so sorry…"

"Gia blamed herself for what happened between my wife and I, but it was not her. My wife did not like my attention to be on anyone but her, and so when I came to love Gia and took her in as our daughter, my wife grew angry with me. She took it out on Gia whenever she could." Again he shook his head.

"Wow. So, you're like Gia's father then?"

Vitaly looked at Alex sideways. "You could put it that way. Gia sometimes likes to remember old times, and I do as well. On those nights she'll come in and we'll sleep like we used to those years ago when she was my little cubling." His expression turned from one of happiness to deadly in an instant. "And anyone who hurts my little girl will have to answer to me. So, what are you going to do about my heartbroken baby?"

Alex stared at the menacing tiger with wide eyes, pressed back into the wood to get a little farther away from him. "I'm going to go…apologize." Slowly, a smile grew on his face. "That's right. I'm going to tell her that everything was a big misunderstanding and that I know everything now. I'll tell her that I'm sorry for hurting her and then I'll ask her to have dinner with me."

"Good boy." Vitaly nodded a little. "And when you pick her up at her car, you will have flowers with you, right? You will treat her like an angel, as she should be treated, and you will have her back to her car at a reasonable hour. You will not try anything that I wouldn't approve of with her, because if you do I will see to it that you cannot do the trapeze again. Is that clear?"

"Crystal." He said with a nod. "Flowers, angel, early, potential death if not gentlemanly. Got it."

Vitaly smiled again. "Good boy," he repeated before motioning toward the door with his head. "Now go and fix my little girl's broken heart before I decide to break yours."

Alex moved to the door, pushing it open before stopping to look over his shoulder at the older tiger. "Are you sure that she feels the same for me as I do for her?"

"She's my baby, of course I know. And even if I couldn't tell on my own, she tells me everything." He sent Alex a serious look. "And I mean everything, so don't think I won't know if you try something."

Alex smiled at Vitaly, knowing the threat was serious, but also knowing that he was just looking out for the cat he'd raised as his own child and who had never been hurt like this before. Gia had probably never had feelings like this before, which made Alex even happier. "Thanks, Vitaly."

"Get out of here and make my girl happy."

Vitaly watched as Alex ran off. He looked up at the trapeze where Gia sat, looking depressed even this far away. He sighed a little, relieved to think that soon she would be her happy self once more, and that he might get to see her as in love as he had once been. And maybe, just maybe, he'd get some grandcubs to spoil soon. His eyes narrowed on Alex's figure, climbing up the trapeze pole…but not too soon…


End file.
